I've got a friend that's going to be running a D&D campaign in a few weeks.

I played the game with my father years ago, when there were only about 8 classes available. What I want to do is make a custom class, however, I've absolutely no idea where to begin, there are so many skills and abilities now!

Basically, I'd like to play a class that focuses on controlling situations:

* Has good hindering ability… I want to be able to slow people down, reduce their movement rates, limit their attacks, reduce the effectiveness of their attacks, make them miss rounds, etc.* Has decent dodging ability… I'd like a low health, fragile build, more suited to hiding behind and helping out the larger people.* Had decent healing ability, but maybe only on others.* Want him to be either a drunkard or addicted to some strange substance, maybe a boost to abilities while under the influence and a reduction to the abilities while sober.

I have NO idea where to start looking. I searched for hindering abilities on Google and came up dry. Any pointers in the right direction would be awesome and much appreciated!

It depends heavily on what version of D&D you're talking about. If you're playing 3.0, 3.5 or Pathfinder, you should be able to customise pretty heavily by mixing and matching from different classes (with bard covering most of your requirements), perhaps even dipping into drunken master for a level or two.

Dungeons and Dragons is a social RPG, not a computer RPG, so in most cases there really isn't a need to create a whole new class for something. You can, if you like and your DM (not GM!!!!) approves and wants to deal with it, but I don't know anyone who ever did. Typically, and here's where social RPG's beat computer games, if you want to do something not explicitly covered in the mechanics or rules, just tell the DM what you're trying to do (in a note if you don't want the other players to know) and they'll figure out what you need to roll against to try.

In your case, I'd probably try playing a monk/martial-artist and use weapons like the bola or other snares. You could take proficiencies in traps/snares as well as first aid, and (if you're playing 3rd or 4th edition) mix in a healing cleric that follows a diety that doesn't believe in self-healing (IE: wont' grant your powers to use on yourself). If you're playing 2nd edition, you can still mult-class, but it's a bit more rigid in how you do it.

I just play whatever I happen to like. D&D is not about the metagame. It's about having fun.

Yeah, I don't want to be super powerful or anything, I just want to be halfway useful to my party and utterly helpless on my own. I just really like playing support classes, I suppose, and not having any real experience with D&D I'm not entirely sure what to expect. :D